Rhode Island's home to many a haunted house -- including the one that inspired The Conjuring -- but one legend you can experience without trespassing is the tale of Mercy Brown. It seemed that back in the day Rhode Island was in the midst of a vampire panic, and its most famous victim was 19-year-old Mercy Brown. After her mother and sister died, Mercy succumbed to tuberculosis as well. Due to the panic, villagers presumed something supernatural was afoot. When they exhumed Mercy, her body was remarkably well preserved... so they removed her heart and liver, burned them down to ashes, and fed them to her sick brother. He died two months later. They say the spirit of Mercy, though, still haunts the cemetery of Exeter, where her gravesite remains a place where morbid tourists flock and where a chill hangs perpetually in the air. Historical fact... Mercy Brown died on January 17, 1892, and her cremated heart was force-fed to her brother. Her story is the most famous of many similarly gruesome tales that stoke the fires of Rhode Island's haunted landscape.
